by Kai Meyer
Alessandro took his tone of voice as condescension. “What other reason would they have had?”
Rosa had to lean a little way out over the abyss to look past Alessandro at the Hungry Man.
“You’re right about one thing,” said the new leader of the dynasties. “The ruins of ancient Arcadia have fallen into dust. Lycaon’s mausoleum, in its time the greatest work of architecture in the kingdom, perhaps in the whole world, who knows? Lycaon’s tomb is only a memory. But memories can be refreshed. Even the greatest architecture can be rebuilt on the ruins of the past. And if you are going to erect something so large, then it must be done in public these days. That’s why it was necessary to make it seem like the monument was something else. Just as large, just as massive as before. A monument to the honor of fallen Arcadia, but one that only those who know the secret will recognize for what it is.”
Alessandro’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a lie.”
“You thought that dam was built to hide Giuliana from me? Until recently I thought so too. But the truth is that your father and Cesare built it with an eye toward seizing power for themselves someday. This dam is an altar. The altar on which the sacrifice sealing the new concordat will be made. It’s a stage. A masquerade, like everything behind which the inheritance of Arcadia has had to hide too long. At this place, in this valley, the old Arcadians built the tomb of their king, and Leonardo Mori rediscovered it. He did it for me, but your father and his advisers had him murdered and took part of the results of his research for themselves. And they built a second shrine, to unite the dynasties there one day.”
The Hungry Man stepped back from the parapet. Rosa did not turn to him, but when he spoke she could hear that he was smiling.
“That day has come,” he said, “and with it the king of you all.”
THE CEREMONY
TWILIGHT WAS RISING TO the top of the dam. Night would fall entirely in an hour’s time, but the abyss was already filling with darkness.
On the asphalt of the bridge, a semicircle of lights had been turned on: phosphorus lamps casting their icy white illumination over the road. The representatives of the dynasties were waiting outside the semicircle. The van had been moved and parked fifty yards away, at the side of the roadway beside a square, block-shaped concrete structure, an entrance allowing technicians who would never service this dam now to climb down to it.
At the center of the semicircle of lights and figures, not far from the parapet, Rosa and Alessandro stood facing each other, their hands still bound. The Hungry Man was performing their marriage ceremony.
Just before it began they had been given another injection, in the upper arm again. Rosa’s shoulder was now stinging almost as much as her leg. Danai, who was responsible for the inflammation, had disappeared among the other Arachnida. The men and women were standing a little way outside the lights. Their faces were lit from below and looked pale as bleached bone above their black clothing. Many were twitching as if they had to fight off the urge to shift shape.
Two guards each stood behind Rosa and Alessandro, with full syringes and pistols with the safety catches off. Rosa had given up resisting for now. Alessandro had made one last attempt before the ceremony began, but the superior strength of his opponents had made it useless. As long as they couldn’t shift shape, their chances were zero.
However, there was one thing that Rosa could still do. She was saving her strength for the moment when she would be ordered to kill Alessandro. They might threaten her, but what threat could you use on someone facing certain death? They could add to the pain she suffered, but she would bear that. Not for the world would she do anything to hurt him. Ever.
While the Hungry Man was reciting something that might be an old traditional poem or just a few lines that he had thought up in prison, her eyes were firmly fixed on Alessandro’s. Wait, choose the right moment. It hadn’t come yet. They were still only standing there, bride and bridegroom, while the Hungry Man’s sermon washed over them.
Fear rose within Rosa. Sometimes she missed a heartbeat and could hardly breathe because her throat felt so tight. But she hid that as well as she could, and suppressed any trembling.
“There’s something I have to say to you,” she whispered.
There was a smile in his eyes, as if to say: Well, this is our best chance.
The Hungry Man went on talking. Rosa wasn’t listening; it was only a meaningless rushing of syllables in the background.
She tried to find the right words, but there weren’t any. She could only say as she felt, even if it sounded clumsy or silly. What she did not say was: I love you. He’d known that for a long time.
Instead, she whispered, “We did everything that mattered right. From the very first moment.”
He nodded. “Yes, every time.”
“It was right for you to speak to me on the flight. And give me the book, Aesop’s Fables. It was right for us to drive to the end of the world, and for you to tell me it wasn’t really an end because the world goes on beyond it, on the other side of the abyss. It was right for us to dive together in the Strait of Messina and look for the statues. And for you to teach me to listen to the animals in that zoo near Etna. All of it, all of it was right.”
Their surroundings might have been blotted out: the Hungry Man’s voice, their armed guards, the silhouettes of the other Arcadians.
Their hands were bound in front of them. Rosa put out her arms, and he his, and they linked their fingers together as if this were their own very private ceremony, a moment that existed only for the two of them.
A last red glow lay over the rugged outlines of the mountains. The moon was shining brightly in the sky. In its light, the Hungry Man produced a silver blade from under his coat and raised it in the air. It was more of a large scalpel than a sacrificial dagger.
A distant humming sound was heard, as if a generator had been switched on in the depths of the dam.
The Hungry Man gave a sign to the guards, and two of them stepped forward. Rosa was expecting the prick of another needle, but it did not come. Instead, she felt the muzzle of a pistol held to her back.
“If you think—” she began, but the Hungry Man signaled to her to keep quiet. She obeyed only because the expression on his face had changed. He looked uneasy.
Alessandro took a deep breath and tensed his upper body. There was murmuring among the Arcadians outside the semicircle of lights, a whispering that the Hungry Man silenced with a gesture. Everyone was now staring at something going on behind Rosa.
She slowly turned her head, and when no one stopped her, turned around and looked in the same direction as everyone else. For a moment the muzzle of the pistol was withdrawn, but in the next moment she felt it again, in her side this time.
Something was happening at the end of the wall of the dam, near the roadblock. A few scraps of words were blown toward them, and the sound of an engine.
The assembled Arcadians were asking questions now, a collective what’s-going-on, murmured so softly that the words could not be made out, only the tone of voice. There was alarm in some of that whispering; in other Arcadians a hunting instinct seemed to be aroused. An acrid animal odor wafted over the asphalt of the road.
Rosa could still see nothing clearly, what with the dazzlingly bright lamps, and the Arcadians blocking her view.
A cell phone rang. And then another.
At the same time the humming noise was heard again, and this time it went on, a constant undertone in the background.
The ringtones stopped when the phone calls were answered. Rosa heard agitated whispering, quickly drowned out by the swelling sound of approaching engines.
“They’ve surrendered the roadblocks,” called someone outside the semicircle of lights.
The Hungry Man moved to the edge of it. “Surrendered them?”
Rosa’s guard pressed the pistol even more firmly into the tender spot below her ribs. But she was under such strain anyway that she wouldn’t have felt even the pain fro
m the stab of a knife.
“What does this mean?” asked the Hungry Man, with a calm that sounded more dangerous than any outburst of fury. “What’s the matter with the men posted there?”
“They’ve abandoned the barriers,” replied someone. “At both ends of the dam.”
Rosa looked around at Alessandro and whispered, “If it was the police we’d have heard shooting, wouldn’t we?”
Frowning, he nodded. The man threatening him with his gun gave him a push. Alessandro took a step forward, which brought him closer to Rosa.
“They’re saying people from the media have turned up,” said one of the Arcadians who had answered a phone call.
“That’s impossible,” cried another. “No one knew—”
“This means treachery,” said someone. “But which of us—”
And then they were all talking at once, until the Hungry Man ordered silence in a sharp voice. “Treachery is a possibility,” he said. “But there’s a way to deal with it. What are a few journalists? Tell the guards to kill them.”
“It’s not as simple as that,” said the old Arachnid, the first to summon up the courage to object. “A great deal has changed in the last few decades, as we’ve all had to learn. The death of journalists would attract more attention than one murdered judge. The media network—”
“I don’t want to hear any more of this nonsense,” the Hungry Man interrupted him. “Shoot them.”
Rosa was watching her guard out of the corner of her eye. His glance went from the Hungry Man to the solitary vehicle driving toward them over the dam. It was a small white car, seeming lost on the long, empty road. That was not what a special anti-Mafia commando unit looked like.
The engine noise came closer, too, filling the valley from the north. A helicopter flying through the dark without lights.
Someone let out a shrill screech. Looking around, Rosa saw a woman shifting shape. Her dress and coat tore into strips of black fabric. In the bright light of the phosphorous lamps, she became a bird the size of a human being, rose from the ground, and soared into the air, her plumage rustling. A second Harpy beside her looked at the Hungry Man with trepidation, and then she too shifted her shape. At first Rosa thought they were going to attack the helicopter together, but they both turned east, followed the course of the dam for a while, and then flew away toward the mountains.
Several of the others were moving about restlessly, but the Hungry Man was not to be intimidated. He had first become capo dei capi at a time when few in Sicily dared to oppose the power of the Mafia. A handful of journalists were not going to scare him.
He put the knife away and walked up to a man who Rosa recognized as a member of Alessandro’s family. “Your gun,” he said.
Alessandro’s Panthera cousin took out a pistol and handed it to him.
“No one move,” said the Hungry Man, as he loaded the gun and put it in his coat pocket.
The small white car braked and rolled slowly up to the semicircle of Arcadians. Rosa saw burning eyes and bared teeth, but no more metamorphoses.
Five more vehicles followed the car at a considerable distance, two of them minibuses with the logos of TV stations on their sides. When Rosa looked back, past Alessandro, she saw that floodlights had appeared at the other end of the dam. The guards would have engaged in a gunfight with the police, but the idea of seeing their own faces on TV in connection with a Mafia assembly would strike panic into them. Most of them had probably shifted into animal shape and run away.
The Lamias, Rosa’s distant cousins, left their positions behind the lights and moved back to the parapet. In snake form they had a better chance than anyone, apart from the Harpies, of disappearing unnoticed.
Several Arcadians stepped aside as the white car stopped. The Hungry Man looked at it, both hands in his coat pockets.
The sound of the helicopter was very close now, but while its lights remained switched off it couldn’t be made out in the dark. It had to be flying very low over the valley floor.
The driver’s door of the little car swung open. A pair of sneakers appeared between the door and the ground, followed by the rubber ends of two crutches.
“They’ll take him apart,” said Alessandro.
Are you two from the media as well? the hotel receptionist had asked. There’s been a lot of coming and going.
Fundling’s head came into view above the side window as he stood up, leaning on his crutches. He had come by himself. Slowly, he went around the car door and approached. He still looked lanky and a little awkward, as Rosa had thought when she first met him. He wore a stained old T-shirt and jeans too large for him. His wild dark hair had grown back since the doctors had removed the bullet from his skull.
When they met, he had seemed to Rosa rather strange—today she was convinced that he had lost it. Never mind what offer from the media had gotten him on his own feet again, he couldn’t survive this intact. The Hungry Man might not have all his old influence as head of the Arcadian dynasties back yet, but the fact that he had succeeded in assembling the capi of all the clans in this place left little doubt that he was extremely powerful.
Aside from having a pistol in his coat pocket.
Fundling’s eyes rested on Rosa and Alessandro. He gave them a fleeting smile. Then he turned to the assembled clan leaders.
“I am the son of Leonardo Mori,” he said in a voice loud enough to be heard above the invisible helicopter. “A few of you know me”—he nodded to the Carnevare delegation—“and some of you know what part my father played in all that’s been going on here. It was he who found the site of Lycaon’s tomb. If not for him you wouldn’t be here today.”
The Hungry Man took a couple of steps toward Fundling, and then they both stopped, only an arm’s length apart. “Your father was a man of great merit, boy. That’s the only reason you’re still alive. Call off your friends and get out of here. Nothing catastrophic has happened yet.”
Fundling indicated Rosa and Alessandro. “I’ll be taking these two with me.”
“I do not,” said his adversary with a smile, “think that you will.”
The obvious superiority of the Hungry Man was rubbing off on some of his loyal followers. First a handful, then more and more of them came past the phosphorus lamps and approached Fundling. In their dark clothes and long coats, they still looked like bank managers.
“Listen to me!” Fundling raised one hand, and the vehicles coming closer from both sides of the dam stopped. “I know what you’re planning to do. I’m here to appeal to your common sense.” He spoke better than he used to; he was more articulate and self-confident. Maybe the wound had straightened out something inside his head. “When the Carnevares killed my father, not all his papers fell into their hands. He had long ago evaluated the information in some of them, and his conclusions were hidden in a safe place.” Fundling never took his eyes off the Hungry Man, although he was speaking to everyone present. “I’ve read most of them. And basically it comes down to something very simple: If you carry on with this ceremony, if you seal a new concordat with a wedding and a sacrifice, then you’re all as good as dead.”
A murmur of mockery ran through the ranks of the Arcadians.
“And that’s what you have to say to us?” asked the Hungry Man. “You say we’d better do as you ask, because otherwise we’ll . . . what? We’ll all perish?”
Fundling did not move a muscle. “Yes, that’s right.”
“The one who won’t survive this evening is you, my boy.”
“Arcadia has already fallen once,” replied Fundling. “And you’ll fall yourselves if you don’t stop stomping the will of the gods underfoot.”
“The gods?” cried the head of the Arachnida. “We are not fools, young Mori. If you hope to intimidate us with tales of gods and spirits and—let me guess—the gaps in the crowd, you have a mammoth task ahead of you. I knew your father. I know what occupied his mind.”
Fundling owed the fact that the Arcadians had not killed
him by this time solely to the teams of journalists who were now on the bridge. No one here could say how many telephoto lenses were turned on the assembly, and none of the Arcadians now dared to show their true nature. However, their patience was visibly running out. Fundling was walking on thin ice.
“My father realized who the invisible beings are, and who sent them. I don’t need to try frightening you. They will do that very ably for themselves.”
“That’s enough!” cried a Hunding.
“Let’s silence him,” one of Rosa’s cousins agreed, letting out a venomous hiss.
Several Arcadians took a few steps forward, passing Rosa, Alessandro, and the men guarding them. All at once the two of them were behind the agitated men and women. When Rosa sensed that the attention of the others was not on her anymore, she was able to take a deep breath again.
“You don’t believe me?” asked Fundling, without retreating a fraction of an inch. “You really intend to deny the existence of the powers that destroyed the ancient bridge and brought down the kingdom of Arcadia?”
The Hungry Man let out a quiet laugh. It sounded almost pitying.
The corners of Fundling’s mouth lifted. Then he said, very slowly, “And yet they have been present today, walking here among you.”
Even Rosa could feel the ripple of cold that ran through the crowd. A kind of collective shudder from all the Arcadians that spread to her as well.
The Hungry Man opened his mouth to answer.
What he was going to say was lost in an infernal roar of noise.
For a moment Rosa thought that Fundling’s prophecy was in fact being fulfilled. That the dam beneath them was breaking up, like the old bridge over the Strait of Messina in the distant past. That it was all really true.
The helicopter was rising from the depths below to the level of the parapet on the far side of the dam wall. Blazing searchlights flared on in the darkness, bathing the scene in artificial daylight. The stormy wind of the rotors caught them all, made the Arcadians’ coat tails dance, blew in their hair and clothing, and flung the Lamias back from the parapet into the road.
